These slides were produced for the JISCMRD Workshop: Meeting challenges in RDM Planning, 23 Mar 2012 by the project "DATUM in Action Supporting researchers to plan and manage their research data". The "DATUM in Action" team consists of Jeremy Ellman, Sue Childs and Principal Investigator Prof Julie McLeod all of Northumbria University, UK

1. DATUM in Action
Supporting researchers to plan and manage
their research data
www.northumbria.ac.uk/datum
Dr Jeremy Ellman
Prof Julie McLeod
School of Computing, Engineering &
Information Sciences
JISCMRD Action – Healthy research needs RDM PLanning,23 Mar 2012
DATUM in Workshop: Meeting challenges in healthy data

2. Outline
 DATUM in Action & its research project target:
MATSIQEL
 MATSIQEL data requirements
 Infrastructure element: a software solution
 Conclusions
DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data 1

3. DATUM in Action
Steps Infrastructure
1. Requirements analysis 1. Training & mentoring
DMP (based on DCC & tailored)
2. Data management plan
2. Guidance
3. Supporting infrastructure researcher focused; what they
wanted; ’how to’ & links to existing
NU guidance; usable by other HEIs
Action Research
Approach • roles & responsibilities
• folders, files & version control
• metadata
• information security
3. Technology
i. shared drive, MS Office
ii. SharePoint (collaborative prototype)
iii.Bazaar – version control
DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data 2

4. MATSIQEL: EU FP7 Research Project
 Data management requirements complex as
research data is
 Confidential
 Partially anonymised
 Partly Proprietary
 Multiple Versions
 both Raw Data and Derived Data
 Multiple Level of access required/allowed
 Required Internationally
 EU and non EU
DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data 3

5. Data Requirements
 Version Control
 Multiple copies of Raw Data
 Versions of Processing Software
 Multiple Versions of Processed Data
 Different Research Centres
 Distribution Control
 Central shared data space
 Authoritative record
 Permissions Management
DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data 4

6. BZR: Bazaar
 Distributed Version Control System
 Multiple Repositories
 Multiple Branches
 Local Check-in Check-out
 Multiple Platform
 Windows, Mac, Linux
 Huge Range of Tools
 bazaar-explorer cross platform GUI
DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data 5

7. VCS Vs DVCS
 Source: Auvray 2008 “Distributed Version Control Systems: A Not-So-Quick Guide”
DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data 6

8. Core Commands
 "bzr init" initializes Bazaar management for the current directory.
 "bzr add" makes all unknown files in the current directory known to Bazaar.
 "bzr status" generates a report of the current state of the local branch.
 "bzr commit -m "[commit-message]"" creates a commit
 "bzr mv [versioned-file] [new-location]" moves the [versioned-file]
 "bzr remove [file]" removes the specified file or files
 "bzr log" generates a log of every commit in sequence
 "bzr help [command]" the Bazaar help command provides embedded
 "bzr merge [location]" instructs Bazaar to merge changes
 "bzr pull" performs a fast-forward update of the local working
 "bzr update" merges the contents of the remote branch into the local branch
 "bzr push" performs the equivalent of a "bzr update" on the remote mirror
 "bzr uncommit" "rewinds" the branch to the last commit
 "bzr revert [file]" takes the specified file and reverts the contents of that
DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data 7

9. Conclusions
 Research data needs to be controlled
 Version control, protection and distribution are
common requirements
 Distributed version control software is freely
available
 BZR Repositories can be archived in SharePoint
DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data 8

10. DATUM in Action
www.northumbria.ac.uk/datum
Project funded by JISC
Copyright holder: Northumbria University, School of
Computing, Engineering & Information Sciences, 2011
Materials made freely available under a Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales license
For accompanying video see HTTP://YOUTU.BE/YQV1VOQWY1C
DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data